Democracies do not take up arms against each other. Although this axiom has attained the status of a mantra in the field of international relations, this statement is much more complex than it appears, in part because it is highly contingent on the definitions and operationalizations of both democracy and conflict. This article revisits democratic peace theory, combining both institutional constraints and similarity-based arguments. Interactions between the democratic level of the dyad (the average democratic level of its members) and its democratic spread (difference between the democratic scores of its members) create a dyadic triangle that encompasses all possible combinations of cases, revisiting which dyads are more prone to conflict. The findings partially confirm and partially refute both the institutional constraints and the similarity-based arguments, leading to a nuanced alternative theory: the Interactive Model of Democratic Peace. Akin to democratic peace theory, our evidence shows that the higher a dyad’s level of democracy is, the lower the probability of fatal militarized interstate disputes between that pair of states. However, contrary to democratic peace theory, we find that dissimilar-regime dyads can still be peaceful as long as they have a high mean of democracy. Following the theory of regime similarity, we consider the democratic spread of each dyad, but we find that being similar is not a sufficient condition for peace between the members of a dyad. From the empirical evidence, the article derives three heuristic zones of conflict, filling much of the gray area that has been left unexplained by previous models.
Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) is a new approach to conceptualization and measurement of democracy. It is co-hosted by the University of Gothenburg and University of Notre Dame. With a V-Dem Institute at University of Gothenburg with almost ten staff, and a project team across the world with four Principal Investigators, fifteen Project Managers (PMs), 30+ Regional Managers, 170 Country Coordinators, Research Assistants, and 2,500 Country Experts, the VDem project is one of the largest ever social science research-oriented data collection programs.Please address comments and/or queries for information to: AbstractDemocracies do not take up arms against each other. This axiom has attained the status of a mantra in the field of international relations. As previous research has shown, however, the truth of this statement is highly contingent on the definitions of both democracy and conflict. Based on this fact, this project has two aims: one empirical and one theoretical. Empirically, it revises this literature, making three substantial improvements: 1) it uses a more robust and transparent measure of democracy (V-DEM); 2) it does not rely on arbitrary cut points between democratic and non-democratic regimes; and 3) it combines the theoretical perspectives of similarity-based and normative views on the reasons behind the peace among regimes. These methodological improvements allow us to generate a new theory of democratic peace, which complements both similarity-based and institutional arguments. We find robust evidence that the higher a dyad's level of democracy, and the smaller the difference between the democratic scores of its members ('democratic spread'), the lower the probability of war (and also militarized interstate disputes, MID) between that pair of states. Thus, not only is the core principle of the democratic peace revealed to be strong enough to withstand different measures of democracy, but it also offers an alternative explanation of conflict.3
Algunas comunidades epistémicas logran influir en las políticas y otras no. Este artículo indaga en los factores que condicionan o permiten esta influencia, enfocándose en el área de política exterior. Para ello, examina a través de process tracing la decisión de Chile de ingresar como miembro pleno en la Alianza del Pacífico, explicando por qué en este caso la comunidad epistémica de política exterior tuvo una limitada influencia.
O objetivo deste artigo é realizar uma análise crítica da noção de patriotismo constitucional como base para a constituição de identidades pós- nacionais em Jürgen Habermas. Em particular, propõe-se uma análise da proposta de Habermas, dando especial atenção a dois possíveis eixos críticos: a dificuldade imposta pelos limites da capacidade de carga das formas de solidariedade existentes (HABERMAS, 2006, p. 172) e a dificuldade de gerar laços de lealdade. Assim, surge a seguinte pergunta: o patriotismo constitucional é capaz de gerar vínculos de lealdade e solidariedade suficientes para a integração social?
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